Deon Jones -- the 47-year-old mother of Houston Texans linebacker Neville Hewitt -- thought when she boarded a plane last weekend she was coming to get an opportunity to try to overturn a prior drug conviction that led to her deportation.
What's unfolded since has been a nightmare for the family, which makes the Texans being eliminated by the Baltimore Ravens last Saturday an afterthought for Hewitt.
Michael Daly of The Daily Beast penned a piece outlining how Hewitt's mother has found herself trapped in an immigration fiasco as she tried to come from her native Jamaica to the United States for a court appearance.
Jones agreed to be deported to Jamaica in 2017 after serving nine years in a Georgia prison following being caught in 2008 as a passenger in a car that had "40 grams of cocaine and some Marijuana in the trunk."
From her family's perspective: She had been up for parole, only for the system to give her such a bad outcome that she threw up her hands and felt like she had no choice but to accept deportation. Mind you, she hadn't move to America as an adult. She came to the United States as a 12-year-old, and both of her children were later born in America.
"In 2017, Jones was up for parole, but immigration authorities put a hold on her. She spent a year and a half in the Irwin County Detention Center - a facility closed to women after a gynecologist there was found to have performed unnecessary hysterectomies and other procedures," The Daily Beast wrote. "Jones told her family that conditions there were so stressful she stopped eating and began losing her hair. She finally could endure no more and agreed to be deported."
Jones' immigration lawyer, Benjamin Osorio, managed to get her a new hearing on her status with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta. Osorio was operating under the belief, after speaking to an ICE officer, that when Jones arrived in Atlanta she would "probably be placed on house arrest with an ankle monitor."
Instead, once her plane landed in Atlanta, ICE treated her like a maximum security prisoner, requiring all parties on the aircraft to remain seated as she was taken out of the plane not only in handcuffs, but with a waist chain.
The argument from her lawyer isn't that the 2008 incident didn't take place, but that under federal law it shouldn't have led to her deportation. And in being flown back to America -- the country she spent the majority of her life in -- Jones was going to get her day in court to determine how things would proceed.
Instead, she now finds herself caught in immigration limbo, detained at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia.
“Where she’s at is worse than prison,” Osorio told The Daily Beast. “When you are detained by immigration, you eat and pretty much just sleep. There isn’t much you can do. You’re just sitting there with your thoughts.”
Osorio went on to say that Jones -- who hadn't been imprisoned in Jamaica -- is likely looking at a months-long process between getting a hearing and potential appeals. Her ultimate goal is to get a green card, but to do so, she may have to give up her freedom for an undetermined amount of time in the interim. And there's no guarantee she will ultimately get a positive result.
Hewitt, 30, has spent the last two seasons playing for the Houston Texans, after previously having been employed by the Miami Dolphins and New York Jets.
"We were already past this point and it’s like all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we’re back at square one," Hewitt said of his mother's uncertain situation.
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